On Your Shoulders
by Kaj-Nrig
Summary: Hojo's wife is perfect, but even perfection fades away. One day, he decides that she isn't worth the effort anymore. For the Fireplace's thousand-word-or-less challenge.


A/N: This short story is loosely based on a Hmong fairy tale and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." I hope you enjoy it, and any reviews are welcome.

Thanks to my proofreaders for this story: **Pied Flycatcher**, **Marilena**, **With A Smile**, **Arachinea **, and **Kyra1**.

Final Fantasy VII is the property of Square Enix. I use these characters without permission.

**Update 02-21-12** - Fixed some errors, added things that were discarded in FFnet's various format changes. A random note: To Hell with FFnet and its claim that the ? goes before the !. I like my punctuation the way it is, thanks. ! followed by ? looks much neater.

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When he first met her, he was happy, oh so happy. Life was good, the sex was great, and he was rich. His wife was beautiful and demure. Perfect. A flawless portrait of youth, sexual vitality, and servitude.

But as the years wore on, and they had a child, he began to see her: the wrinkles in her face, the withering of her skin, the sagging of her breasts... Her son sucked her youth away like a leech. Once, while searching through her photo album, he realized the sick, twisted nature of her genes – like a vampire, her son would steal her youth, just like she had stolen the youth of her mother.

Hojo was disgusted. They had to go. Both of them.

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**On Your Shoulders**  
By Kaj-Nrig

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The boy was seven. He went off to school one day, and Hojo smiled as he watched him leave. It would be tonight. His wife would go now, and her son tonight.

Their house was a small one, unique from all the others in its mundanity, extraordinary in its lack of extraordinaire. The paint on its walls was peeling, the wood in its frame cracked, and a horrible gash split the center wall of the house, running all the way along the foundation to the ceiling. As Hojo looked at it, he noticed that it sagged, held down as if a massive weight lay on its shoulders.

Hojo despised this house, and he despised its occupants.

"Honey, come here," he said. They met in the kitchen. She smiled at him, oblivious, and those ugly, wrinkled, parched lips made him gag. Still trying to be perfect, she was.

He reached under the sink, his shoulders drooping as he grabbed a hatchet. The smooth, sandalwood grip felt nice and powerful in his hand. Hojo hefted it, testing its strength, and then he swung it, wildly, slashing around and into her neck with reckless abandon.

She fell instantly, shoulders twitching as she jerkily scrabbled at the wound. There was a hiss of air as her voice gurgled through her throat.

Hojo swept her hands away and sliced again. Chop, chop, and the head rolled across the floor. The body continued to twitch violently.

After fifteen minutes, her limbs had gone rigid, but they continued to spasm periodically, so with calculated swings, chop, chop, they were removed, and he dragged her – all six parts of her – into his backyard. The burial was clean and efficient. A high wooden fence blocked him from view, and the hole did not take long to exhume. He arranged her body parts neatly, taking up as little space as possible, and after burying her, he tossed the displaced earth into the garden.

By the time Hojo finished his shower, the grinding wheels of the bus were rounding the corner to his street.

_He's going to ask. He's going to ask about her sooner or later. I'll kill him then,_ he concluded. It was a good plan. He would wait until her son was curious, until he started to suspect. The boy would die with doubt on his shoulders, with confusion and uncertainty and Purgatory looming over him; that was the only way he deserved to go.

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Her son came back. "Hello, son." He smiled, and her son smiled back.

"Hi, Dad."

He paused, but her son did not. The boy went to his room and did his homework.

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The next day, her son went to school and came back.

"Hello, son."

"Hi, Dad."

The boy didn't ask about her.

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The thirtieth day, her son went to school and came back.

"Hello, son."

"Hi, Dad."

The boy didn't ask about her.

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On the thirty-first day, Hojo followed her son to his room. Questions consumed him – _Why, why, WHY?_! _Why don't you ASK?_! _Why do you SMILE_ _at me like that?_ – weighed on him, tormented him. Each day, her son spoke, and each day, his words seemed to hiss at him, like a snake, almost, or like a leaky gas pump.

His hands trembled, his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, and he could feel the pressure, the stifling pressure on top of him, wringing, suffocating, nauseating.

The room was small, even for the boy. A window lay at the far end, but it was cracked and warped shut, and the curtains were jammed closed. There was no light in the room. Afterwards, he thought, after he killed the boy, he would tear down those shades and let the light shine through.

"Son," he began, "don't you wonder where your mother is? Aren't you worried about her?" He held the hatchet behind him, hiding it from the boy.

Her son looked quizzically at him, and then smiled that torturous smile of his.

He saw something reflected in her son's clear, blue eyes. The reflection smiled at him, just like her son smiled at him, and he didn't like it, didn't like it at all.

The boy's lips moved, and then he swung, and the boy's blood splattered against the walls, against the cracking walls of the house, and when he was done, he went over and tore the curtains down, just like he said he would.

Outside, the world was night.

Her son's words repeated itself over and over in his head, wrapped around his shoulders, sitting on him, compressing him into the ground.

The smoke from the house smothered Hojo; he found himself staring at its fire-consumed frame buckling feebly before crashing under its own weight.

He couldn't help but understand those words. He saw it as clearly as he saw a strand of her hair dangling before his eyes. Her son's words...

_What are you talking about, Dad? She's right there, sitting on your shoulders._

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-End-


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